Carnegie Corporation Publications

Most American adolescents navigate the critical transition years from ten to eighteen with relative success. With good schools, supportive families, and caring community institutions, they grow up to meet the requirements of family life, friendship, the workplace, and citizenship in a technically advanced, democratic society. Even under difficult conditions, most young people grow into responsible, ethical, problem-solving adults. For others, however, the obstacles in their path can impair their physical and emotional health, destroy their motivation and ability to succeed, and damage their personal relationships. At least one quarter of all adolescents are at high risk for engaging in dangerous behaviors that threaten their health and long-term prospects.

Both groups of adolescents--those who appear to be making a reasonably successful transition to adulthood and those for whom promising options can fade as early as fourteen or fifteen--are the urgent concern of the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development. The Council, established by Carnegie Corporation of New York in 1986, is composed of national leaders from education, law, science, health, religion, business, the media, youth-serving agencies, and government and is chaired by the Corporation's president, David A. Hamburg. For the past ten years, the Council's mission has been to place the challenges of the adolescent years higher on the nation's agenda for action. Through task forces and working groups, meetings and seminars, commissioned studies and reports, and other activities, the Council has endeavored to synthesize the best available knowledge and wisdom about adolescence in America, to consider how families and other pivotal institutions can meet young people's enduring human needs for healthy development, and to craft a set of practical strategies for setting young adolescents on the paths toward successful adulthood.

Great Transitions: Preparing Adolescents for a New Century represents the concluding report of the Carnegie Council and the culmination of its work. It draws heavily on previous publications, including its three major public policy reports, Turning Points: Preparing Youth for the 21st Century (1989); Fateful Choices: Healthy Youth for the 21st Century (1992); and A Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Nonschool Hours (1992). The report also draws on Council- and Corporation-supported research syntheses, notably At the Threshold: The Developing Adolescent (1990); the three-volume publication of the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, Adolescent Health (1991); and Promoting the Health of Adolescents: New Directions for the Twenty-first Century (1993). Other seminal sources for this report are the Council's working papers, including Life-Skills Training: Preventive Interventions for Young Adolescents (1990) and School and Community Support Programs that Enhance Adolescent Health and Education (1990).

The recommendations of the Carnegie Council rest on six basic concepts about adolescence, particularly early adolescence:

The years from ten through fourteen are a crucial turning point in life's trajectory. This period, therefore, represents an optimal time for interventions to foster effective education, prevent destructive behavior, and promote enduring health practices.
Education and health are inextricably related. Good health facilitates learning, while poor health hinders it, each with lifelong effects. Commensurately, a positive educational experience promotes the formation of good health habits, while academic failure discourages it.
Destructive, or health-damaging, behaviors in adolescence tend to occur together, as do positive, health-promoting, behaviors.
Many problem behaviors in adolescence have common antecedents in childhood experience. One is academic difficulty; another is the absence of strong and sustained guidance from caring adults.
Preventive interventions are more likely to be successful if they address underlying factors that contribute to problem behaviors.
Given the complex influences on adolescents, the essential requirements for ensuring healthy development must be met through the joint efforts of a set of pivotal institutions that powerfully shape adolescents' experiences. These pivotal institutions must begin with the family and include schools, health care institutions, a wide array of neighborhood and community organizations, and the mass media.

With Great Transitions, the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development brings to a close its decade-long effort. A key lesson from its experience is the importance of careful examination of the facts, nonpartisan analysis, broad dissemination with the involvement of key sectors, and sustained commitment over a period of years. Above all, a long-term view is essential if there is to be any progress in bringing about the difficult yet fundamental changes necessary to improve the life chances of all our young people.

GREAT TRANSITIONS

Preparing Adolescents for a New Century

Introduction